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clement-montreal
Participating Frequently
August 15, 2022
Question

Simple red dot tracking in Ae doesn't work

  • August 15, 2022
  • 5 replies
  • 1882 views

Trying to make a very simple red dot tracking in After effect 22.5.0 Build 53, but the tracker doesn't follow the point at all, even though it looks super simple to do. ?

 

I made a video to show what i'm doing: simple transform tracking , 2D,

 

Any advice ?

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

Josie_
Josie_
Known Participant
August 15, 2022

I did similar a similar project recently, except mine was a cube.

Try using a black solid layer bg first, for contrast. 

and then remove solid after track hopefully successfully done.

Josie_
Josie_
Known Participant
August 15, 2022

To add further, you could try slowing down the clip also before tracking. 

and then back to normal speed after finished.

R
Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 15, 2022

The feature tracker, not it's not a point tracker, has a feature region, the inner box, and a search area, the outer box. The search area must be big enough to find the detail area in the next and previous frame. The Feature must have some detail. A fairly large red dot against a gray background does not have much detail. Your feature region should include the dot and about the same amount of background. The search area should be a fair bit bigger than the maximum movement of the dot.  I got a near-perfect track with this setup:

The project file is included. Understanding how the Feature tracker works helps you figure out which shots it will work on. This is one of the few shots where Feature Tracking work better than Planer tracking in Mocha AE. 

Mylenium
Mylenium
Legend
August 15, 2022

Then perhaps it's those pesky hardware acceleration issues striking again, which would apply to ProRes in particular since there are additional bugs. As a test, try a different format and see if it works. Also turn off hardware acceleration in AE in case this is somehow related to drawing the widget overlays and the display pipeline.

 

Mylenium

C
clement-montrealAuthor
Participating Frequently
August 15, 2022

Mystery remains.. I disabled HW acceleration, rebooted the entire pc, re-encoded my Pre Ros into regular H264 / mp4, but still the same problem 😞

 

I provide the source file just in case someone would like to reproduce

C
clement-montrealAuthor
Participating Frequently
August 15, 2022

Thanks for the advice, I followed both of yuors, but none works ..

 

See video

Mylenium
Mylenium
Legend
August 15, 2022

Check the "Options" button in the tracker panel. By default AE tracks luminance, not color and your grey and the red dot have pretty much the same values or at least not enough contrast.

 

Mylenium

P.M.B
P.M.B
Legend
August 15, 2022

The tracker works by following a point of pixel contrast  (or something like that).

Instead of putting the entire dot inside the tracker view,

try moving it over an edge of the dot so there is both red and grey.

 

 

~Gutterfish
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